By BERT WHYTE
auNo! — North Vietnam to-
aoe the best educated nation

Outh-east Asia: 95% of the
puiation can read and write.
M f course, literacy is only one
ee of culture. With its

jeter or years-old history,
aes was the cradle of an
a ne original culture.
em only hampered its
evoppment; the August 1945
4 Slution unchained it and led

& triumphant revival:
ci ead Can, vice-minister of
mais and a well-known poet,
room med me in his reception
ae Sat down at a table across
his 5 me, poured tea, slipped off
Be ccs. rubbed his bare feet

her and began to talk.
Dhatie aces, dynamic, em-
cor c, ebullient, Huy Can is a
Pelling figure — the kind
eae one warms to in a
“re of minutes. Simpatico.
votes a poet before the Re-
a On and I’m one today.”
in 1945, 1 a broad grin: “But
culture» was minister of agri-
eS Bronze Age
4.000 Skipped backward in time
bane To Dong Son, the
in Viet age, which corresponds
e ,.4m’s ancient history to
Staten nod of the Van Lang

» a federation of 15 tribes.
ization fairly high stage of civil-
Pottery, 12 bronze ploughshares,

Ty, handicrafts.
an tossed off names
; co tele You’d think he
Bitton te on the people
ae faruped ahead to the Au
the y.."8dom, which defeated
thing “TS toward the end of the
long century B.C. Then to the
dominate” of Chinese feudal
AD. 1on (from 43 to 939
Dl eae the role that scholars
gles. fey the resistance strug-
CUlturans . efusal to ‘become
Hang JY assimilated with the

on inde Trung Sisters, who
Years “°Pendence for three

Rey
like
7 firec

Th

Works n° 13th century literary

® soni pon to appear in nom,

charac, derived from Chinese

Ctibe sis and used to trans-

Q the Vietnamese language.
th century it deve-

loped further. Nguyen Trai’s
poems won renown. In addition
to being a poet he was a great
military leader, a superb stra-
tegist.

But it was the 18th century
that witnessed a real flowering
of Vietnamese. culture, said
Huy Can.

I had been having a hard time
following his discourse. Now I
was on more familiar ground,
having read a translation of
Kieu, the great classic of Viet-
namese literature in which the
poet Nguyen Du _ (1765-1820)
told the tragic tale of an intel-
ligent and beautiful girl who
fell victim of a corrupt society.
And I had read Lament of a

-Warrior’s Wife, by Doan Thi

Diem. I also knew the name’ of
poetess Ho Xuan Huong, first
to demand the right of equality
for women.

Three Characteristics |

Huy Can switched to a philo-
sophical discussion.

“There are three general
characteristics of the Vietnam-
ese that go back a long way in
history and are present today,”
he said. ‘Patriotism — reflected
in all our literary works. Hu-
manism: despite numerous in-
vasions, we have never deve-
loped zenophobia; on the con-
trary, we love-people as friends.
And optimism—it runs very
deep. Only when you under-
stand these characteristics will
you begin to understand our
people.”

He spoke of the Vietnameze
love of laughter (something no
one can miss) and laughed as he
spoke. Certain types of Viet-
namese theatre bring on “a for-

“est of laughter,” he said.

Under the French, he remark-
ed in an aside, Vietnamese was
regarded as a minor language.
First came French, the official
tongue, then English as the ma-
jor foreign language, then Viet-
namese.

“On the very first day after
Liberation all teaching switched
to Vietnamese. When Nehru
visited our country a few years
later this greatly surprised him
—he said that in India they
were still teaching in English.”

Turning to modern literature,

Scene from a highland village in North Vietnam.

Huy Can noted that it had one
purpose, to reflect and develop
the revolutionary heroism of the
people, And it draws on three
sources — real life, historical
traditions, and the best of uni-
versal culture. *

At the close of our -discus-
sion we parted as old friends. I
felt that I had learned a great
deal.

% * *

There are 63 national minor-
ities in Vietnam, 37 of them in
the North.

Equality between nationalities
is affirmed on the first page of
the 1959 Constitution:

“All the nationalities living
on the territory of Vietnam are
equal in rights and duties. The
State has the obligation to
maintain and develop solidar-
ity among the various national-
ities. All acts of discrimination
against, or oppression of, any
nationality, and all actions
aimed at sowing discord among
the nationalities are strictly
prohibited.”

With the help of the Kinh
(the majority nationality); the
national minorities in the high-
lands of North Vietnam have
made great progress in all fields.

The larger naticnal minorities
include the Tay, numbering
510,000; Muong, 420,000; Thai,
390,000; Nung, 320,000; Meo,
225,000; Man, 190,000; and Han,
125,000. -

Minorities United

“One important characteristic
of minorities: is a tradition of
solidarity to defend them-
selves,” said Nguyen Chi Kim,
head of a committee of the De-
partment of National Minor-
ities. “They have always united
to oppose intruders, and kept
verbal records of: their deeds,
stories passed down through the
ages. It is noteworthy that Kinh
feudalism never interfered with
the national minorities, and
maintained good relations with
them.”

Chi Kim, a thin-faced, bald-
ing man with a gentle smile,
was born in a mountain prov-
ince, worked there until 1945,
joined the party in 1946 and
continued working among the
minorities in the Northwest
(Tay Bac Autonomous Region).
He asked me to note that four
of the five members of the com-
mittee leading this work are
from minorities— Thai, Mu-
ong, Nung and Han. The fifth
member is a Kinh.

“Various minorities live very
close to each other,” said Chi
Kim. “For example, the Meo
live in 437 villages, but only 192
are completely Meo. This situ-
ation is more or less the same
everywhere in the highlands.
Often seven or eight minorities
live in one village.

Schools, Universities

“There are considerable dif-
ferences in the educational and
cultural level of minorities. Our
main line is to develop solidar-
ity between the majority and
the minorities, on the principle
of equality. We want to help
them develop their revolution-

ary spirit, learn to control their .

own affairs, and make equality
a reality in this way. Even dur-
ing the war this work continued
and advanced.

“Today every village has a

four-grade school and there is
a seventh-grade school for every
two villages, on the average.
Each district has a 10th-grade
school. More than 2,000 students
have reached university level
and 1,500 have graduated to
date. Over 100 students from
minorities have been _ sent
abroad to study. During the war
we built two universities in the
Northwest.

Services Provided

“Most of the peasants have
joined cooperatives, and they
now grow enough food to meet
local needs. Some small indus-
tries have been started. There
are doctors and surgeons in
every ‘district. New roads have
been built and communication
systems are better. Some of the
highland people have moved
down to lower levels and be-
come farmers. By these meth-
ods, ..we make progress. But
there are still many problems to
solve, and the nomadic instinct
has not entirely disappeared.

“In the war years there was
a strong movement among the
youth to join the army and many
women also joined the armed
forces. During the ‘Johnson
war’ the minorities shot down
523 aircraft and in the ‘Nixon
war’ another 260.”

2 * *

_A visit to the Fine Arts Mu-
seum in Hanoi was a rewarding
experience. Twice removed -to
the countryside during the war,
the museum is just getting re-
settled in a building which the
French colonialists used as a
Catholic boarding school. The
museum has four sections: na-
tional minorities; ancient art;
folk art and crafts; modern
painting and sculpture.

The Thai minority (in the
Dien Bien Phu area) build their
thatched-roof houses on piles,
because of the prevalence of
floods and the presence of wild
animals. Houses are divided
into two parts, for the family
and for guests — with separate
entrances.

Many minorities wear elabo-
rate embroidered dresses. But
the Zao wear print dresses, and
the Lo-lo clothes are made by
sewing many small pieces of
cloth together —like a patch-
work quilt. The Muong all sport
wide cloth embroidered belts:
the Tay Numg broad hats and
“shaman” clothes.

Thai girls — one of the 63 Vietnamese national aoe,

Under colonialism 95% of
the Vietnamese people were il-
literate. There was- only one
university in all of Indochina
(Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos) and
only one junior high school for
all the mountain regions.

After the proclamation of in-
dependence in 1945, Ho Chi
Minh called on the people to
eliminate illiteracy, and in the
course of one year more than
two million people learned to
read and write.

Education has taken tremen-
dous strides since then. But the
economic and cultural develop-
ment of the country requires
more and more educated lead-
ers and consequently there is
constant “escalation” on the
educational front.

“The school is linked to sco-
ciety, life, production and strug-
gle,” says a Vietnamese slogan.

In the last day of my stay in
Vietnam I went to Chu Van.An
secondary school in the Ba
Dinh section of Hanoi and met
with several teachers and stu-
dents. The school was founded
under the French in 1907 and
has a long revolutionary tradi-
tion. Among its graduates are
Premier Pham Van Dong and
the present mayor of Hanoi,
Tran Duy Hunh. a

Today the school has 1,500
students, evenly divided be-
tween boys and girls. There are
79 teachers and the school oper-
ates in three five-hour shifts.
During the war years the whole
school was evacuated to the
countryside on two occasions.
Despite the difficulties these
moves created, 85% of students
taking their graduating exams
passed, and this year 235 stu-
dents who took university ex-
trance exams all passed.

* * * r

Space prevents me from deal
ing with other aspects of the
cultural development in Viet-
nam: the growth of science;
press, radio and publishing; lib-
raries and museums; modern
literature; music and dancing;
theatre and cinema; health
work; physical training and
sports.

Suffice it to say that the
Party’s cultural policy activities
and stimulates work in all these
fields, and that cultural work-
ers play a vital role in the build-
ing of a socialist society in Viet-
nam today.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, MAY 4, 1973—PAGE 7